At 6:06 p.m. this evening, the KPFA evening news was interrupted by background sounds of KPFA "Flashpoints" host Dennis Bernstein protesting rough handling on the part of the armed security guards who apparently were enforcing his suspension for material broadcast on the air a few minutes earlier.
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Okay, so, I got off my ass after finishing the Po'Inc post and drove over to KPFA about eight blocks away and parked in the Grand Auto parking lot across the street from the action a little after 10:00p. I asked the first guy I saw with a cell phone what was happening. There were several hundred people milling around with signs, maybe more around the corner on Berkeley Way. One big sign showed an ugly fat face labeled CIA-FBI eating a ball labeled KPFA. Another was a tall rectangle with three faces with tape across their mouths--the fired staff.
When I got there the cops were behaving themselves and blocking the back entrance on Berkeley Way. MLK was blocked to traffic so the demonstrators had plenty of room to gather in front of the office door. The cops were moving a steel chair with wheels over behind the building. This is a device to strap 'passive resistant' demonstrators to, or the disabled, so they can be carted off to the arrest van without actually dragging bodies around.
The chanting was intermittent, until the news crew's lights came on, and so on cue we chanted "Free KPFA" and clapped in cadence.
The talk was that several people were arrested earlier when they entered the offices to sit in. It was unclear if the security guards or the station manager got the police to bust them or whether these were citizen arrests. Whatever the formalities, these were citation style arrests where the cops roust you outside and then write you up with a ticket over by the paddy wagon. Meanwhile, sometime earlier in the evening, maybe nine or so, two members of the Berkeley City Counsel showed up (Maudel Shriek and somebody else). They went in side and then came out. Theoretically, they were headed over to the counsel chambers to pass a resolution advocating third party meditation--jeese how rad. But they wouldn't have five votes so that probably came to nothing tonight.
I spotted Gene, a guy I knew from old CIL strike days and he sort of filled in some of the blanks--like why the CIA-FBI face was eating the KPFA ball. I couldn't follow it, but it seems some of the national board were originally part of the CIA radio broadcasting system. The FBI connection had something to do with civil rights enforcement in the Justice Dept. Like I said, I couldn't follow it--it was noisy and Gene was tired of explaining it all.
So, just before 11:00p I came back to catch the local news. Only the NBC/Chron/KGO station covered it at 11:00p--as far as I could tell. It was their lead story. Maybe the other stations lead with it also, but by the time I switched around, everybody was on some school bus accident with kids from a local Y camp.
The current plan is to hit the streets at 5:00p tomorrow night with a bigger crowd for more media attention. The location will cause a traffic mess, since most of the side streets are blocked off with traffic barriers to through traffic. I must say this is the kind of story that only KPFA would ever cover. And, what finally made me care, was knowing that was a bygone era. That and the fact the crowd was mostly my age--fifty something--gerry at tricks one and all. On the street the rumor was that Dennis Bernstein was still inside and not arrested. That conflicts with the posted news at
http://www.radio4all.org/freepacifica/alerts/index.html
So, maybe he was arrested earlier, given a ticket, and just turned around and when back inside. On the other hand, maybe that's what the steel chair was going to be used for--hauling his ass out the back door on Berkeley Way.
We'll see tomorrow.
Chuck Grimes,
live, but barely awake in Berkeley.